26 ms·

Zero arrests in 6 months of health care professionals replacing police officers

679 points by ryanwhitney 6y ago

jennyyang 6y ago
I fully support using the proper resources to tackle these non-violent problems instead of sending cops which could very easily turn into someone dead. What I do not support is completely decriminalization or disincarceration like the current DA of San Francisco is doing. He has turned SF into a dangerous place where criminals are no longer worried about stealing into cars, burglarizing homes, etc. This will only escalate and I really hope the recall effort to get rid of him hastens.
lorax_108 6y ago
this is what people mean by defunding the police! conservatives are so silly when they say this increases crime...
wartron 6y ago
This title makes it sound like a bad thing, but this is good. Edit: I think the title was changed between me posting this. Please ignore it.
- Triv888 6y ago
  That new title confused me at first... maybe I'm the only one. The actual title of the article is more clear to me. Actual title: "In the first six months of health care professionals replacing police officers, no one they encountered was arrested" HN title: "Zero arrests in 6 months of health care professionals replacing police officers"
- tsycho 6y ago
  Funny, I read the title and immediately thought it was a good thing. Only after I read your comment did I consider the alternative :)
- dv_dt 6y ago
  Why not the actual title (though that title is a little awkward too) “In the first six months of health care professionals replacing police officers, no one they encountered was arrested”
  - ryanwhitney 6y ago
    Character count, sadly. I’m not a fan of editing either.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Whether no arrests is a good thing depends on the crimes. Only the most ideologically blinded would defend having a social worker team like this respond to car break-ins and the other broad daylight petty theft that has plagued California since they passed that ballot measure awhile back (and a couple other specific cities with similiar legislation). If using this program as an alternative to police response for drunk and disorderly conduct, teenagers doing teenager things, homeless person trespassing and other "no immediate victim" type crime (which is what it sounds like from TFA) then it's a good thing.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    If the breakins are people who need food and shelter, maybe they can help. Or if they can convince people to switch from crime to legitimate income. In other words I'd be okay with lesser penalties for someone smashing my window if in exchange there was a very high likelihood of getting caught, and of that event leading to reformed lives.
    - cvdub 6y ago
      I'd love to see stats on how many of the people involved in these incidents end up leading reformed lives. The mental health team diffuses the situation and no one gets arrested. That's great on paper, but what happens tomorrow? If someone is smashing car windows to pay for their drug addiction, what's stopping them from doing it again tomorrow?
      - myownpetard 6y ago
        > what's stopping them from doing it again tomorrow? Giving medical help to a drug addict is more likely to reduce the likelihood that they commit another crime than giving them a criminal record.
        nitrogen 6y ago
        Anecdotally, I can confirm this by seeing someone who made one very real but economically insignificant mistake have their career ruined for years over a misdemeanor charge. They needed financial and emotional help. Instead they got a plea bargain steamroller, no chance to talk to counsel, etc.
- sdrg822 6y ago
  Agreed, the "but" in the bolded text[1] further confuses, but the article highlights some great progress. >> STAR, has responded to 748 incidents." >> about 3 percent of calls for DPD service, or over 2,500 incidents, were worthy of the alternative approach [1] "Chief Pazen is thrilled with the success of STAR, but the time and money it saves will go toward fighting crime, he said."
- baryphonic 6y ago
  The title is the worst part of the story. It seems tautological that a person will not be arrested when the police hand off that person to people who don't carry out arrests. It'd be a bit like saying that in the first six months of marijuana legalization, there were zero arrests for marijuana possession. The more interesting (and heartening) aspect is that the police and the white van brigade appear to be working together and helping each other do what they do best, with benefits to the community.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Exactly. If the police decide they're making an arrest these guys aren't getting the call. These guys get called when the police feel like helping but can't justify spending their time on it.
  - addicted 6y ago
    The white van has the right and ability to call the police to make an arrest. In the past, these 750 incidents, which did not require police intervention would have likely led to a police squad wasting time on these 750 incidents as opposed to spending time on other real crime issues. The problem is that such white vans don’t exist in other police forces.
  - astura 6y ago
    If the mental health personnel can't resolve the issue on their own they call for police backup to make arrests. The fact there were zero arrests means the mental health personnel were able to handle every case they encountered. I agree it's worded strangely.
michaelbuckbee 6y ago
Wow. That one team of folks is on track to handle 1,500 incidents a year. That's a tremendous win on pretty much every level.
imperio59 6y ago
No one is talking about the very big risk associated with this, that mental health professionals can commit you against your will with no trial, which is an erosion of civil liberties (incarceration without trial). Having known several friends who got committed and held against their will in psych wards when there was no good reason to, because their insurance was good, this is an issue. Notice they don't give any stats about outcomes, but the primary cited issue is "mental health" which is very vague and a subjective assessment. We should not create an extra judicial system that has no checks and balances. Otherwise we will head towards medical authoritarianism which could easily be abused by those in power (psychiatrists and others) for their own personal gain. See https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosalindadams/intake https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosalindadams/intake for an example of what I mean.
- monadic3 6y ago
  > No one is talking about the very big risk associated with this The left is. "Abolish the police"/"Abolish prisons" refer to an abolition of policing and the entire law enforcement/prison complex. Social workers (and, I suspect, other rapid response officials) are certainly part of this.
- Benjammer 6y ago
  Is the risk alone a "very big" risk? Or are you saying the difference in risk of this happening with a cop vs. a medical person is a "very big" difference? Are cops not also able to commit someone involuntarily? Why are you talking about objective "very big risk" without comparing it to the current situation and what is different about this? I did a google search for "can a police officer commit someone to a mental ward" and this is the first result, from harvard: https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2014/11/25/short-term-emergency-commitment-laws-require-police-to-assess-symptoms-of-mental-illness/#:~:text=In%20most%20jurisdictions%2C%20a%20police,short%2Dterm%20emergency%20commitment%20process https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2014/11/25/short-ter.... This says that a police officer is also able to commit someone in most jurisdictions. Why didn't you also mention this fact? FUD
  - aaronbrethorst 6y ago
olivermarks 6y ago
Worth revisiting this 1984 NYT article 'HOW RELEASE OF MENTAL PATIENTS BEGAN' 'THE policy that led to the release of most of the nation's mentally ill patients from the hospital to the community is now widely regarded as a major failure. Sweeping critiques of the policy, notably the recent report of the American Psychiatric Association, have spread the blame everywhere, faulting politicians, civil libertarian lawyers and psychiatrists....' This is encouraging in Denver but we need a much more serious nationwide approach IMO https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-me...
- olivermarks 6y ago
  'Many of the psychiatrists involved as practitioners and policy makers in the 1950's and 1960's said in the interviews that heavy responsibility lay on a sometimes neglected aspect of the problem: the overreliance on drugs to do the work of society. The records show that the politicians were dogged by the image and financial problems posed by the state hospitals and that the scientific and medical establishment sold Congress and the state legislatures a quick fix for a complicated problem that was bought sight unseen.'
Fellshard 6y ago
Correlation / causation problem here. Of course arrests will go down in that circumstance, by definition. You need other metrics beyond 'arrests' to properly measure effectiveness of the policy, though.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  I would assume that if the mental health professional can't resolve the issue, then they would call the police to arrest them, no?
  - haggy 6y ago
    Yea they even mention that traditional policing didn't go away, they are just now focused on crime
  - darawk 6y ago
    Right, but they're also arresting fewer people. People that likely would otherwise have been arrested. Broadly speaking i'm supportive of this initiative, but it's important that its outcomes actually be measured, and just number of arrests is not a good metric. Not arresting people is easy, it's hard to not arrest them without increasing crime. I hope it works though.
    - danShumway 6y ago
      > People that likely would otherwise have been arrested. But that's... that's the point, right? I get what you're saying, but the outcome people wanted was "conflicts that don't need to result in arrests should stop resulting in arrests." The goal was to reduce needless arrests and only have arrests in situations that couldn't be handled in other ways. I mean, we can measure other things like long-term impacts on people's health, prevalence of crime, etc... but one of the questions I was hearing when this idea was first floated was actually, "can these situations be resolved without arrests, or are the police just going to need to be eventually called anyway?" And it does seem like this outcome goes some way towards answering that question. Just as an analogy: if I introduce script changes in a support center with the goal of solving customer problems faster and having fewer calls escalated up the chain to upper management, and at the end of 6 months, way fewer calls are being escalated up the chain to upper management, then that's a statistic I care about. It's not the only stat I care about when figuring out if my changes were successful, I might also look at things like customer satisfaction and call time, but it is on its own a pretty important outcome for me to measure.
jacob2484 6y ago
I support the initiative, but it's sadly only a matter of time until one of the social workers is slashed/shot at by someone they're trying to help.
- pm90 6y ago
  They’re professionals. I think they’re aware that there are risks involved on this job. The brutal truth is that social services for the dysfunctional elements of society will almost certainly involve more risk than what “regular” people will face. I hope that they’re compensation reflects that additional risk.
  - smabie 6y ago
    Compensation for risk occurs through the same mechanism as compensation for everything: the supply and demand curves. This creates outcomes where the compensation for risk occurs at a deeper level, co-mingled in with many other factors. I'm sure many people don't agree with this and think the absolute riskiness of a job should factor into compensation irrespective of the risk preferences of the labor market as a whole. I don't really agree and generally contend that markets (labor or otherwise) are the most efficient and elegant solution for pricing anything. At the very least, if a better and more robust system exists, it hasn't been discovered as of yet.
    - elil17 6y ago
      When the government is the one doing the hiring, they don’t have to pay market rates. They can decide add on hazard pay. This system already exists - it’s why police get better pay and benefits compared to jobs with similar education requirements and levels of danger in the private sector (e.g. delivery drivers). Why couldn’t that hazard pay be extended to these psychiatric responders?
      - souprock 6y ago
        Yes they have to pay market rates. Suppose they don't. They declare the job to be worth $2/hour, which they can do because minimum wage is just a law the government can change. Nobody takes the job. Now what? Those job openings go unfilled forever, literally forever, until the government decides to pay market rate. The only way to pay below market rate is conscription. The government could draft people, forcing them to do the job. If people are free to leave, they are getting market rate.
malandrew 6y ago
Given that they are being dispatched to those incidents that cops probably wouldn't have responded with an arrest anyways, it's hard to compare. If they or cops were dispatched entirely randomly to incidents, it would be possible to do a fair comparison so long as the number of incidents the both groups respond to were numerous enough to be statistically significant.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Considering the DPD boss supported this method precisely because he was having police officers wasted at situations that didn't need them, the fact that there were no arrests means perfect specificity on the test for "Should I choose STAR over PD?". Why would you randomly dispatch them? That would defeat the purpose entirely of this unit.
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
I’m sure it’s more complex than this, but why isn’t the federal government jumping at this as a massive employment opportunity. You could train a wide variety of people for these jobs, and the way the jobs could be structured, support roles might not require college degrees in a lot of cases. Award grants or conditional extra city funding to cities that grow the program and make it work. People get to feel good about giving back, the country can feel good about reducing needless arrests, we can make bigger strides to solving homelessness, we can make good on various social justice reform items not only without necessarily massively defunding police, but also by freeing police up to actually do the much harder job they are trained for and stop treating police like they need to also be an arbitrary mental health issue handler. There’s a lot of complexity for sure. This idea will hit a lot of roadblocks. But it seems like the potential upside across a dozen or so dimensions is super high. Of course this is the same country that shuts out widespread nuclear power, so maybe this is the last we’ll hear about it when some police equipment manufacturer starts lobbying against it the minute one of these workers is involved in a violent encounter or significant arrest or something.
- jquery 6y ago
  > I’m sure it’s more complex than this For starters, a lot of people have negative productivity. Think of someone intensely anti-social who drags down the productivity of people around them.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    Presumably that would be true of any possible intervention and if we overcome that risk in every endeavor reliant on human productivity then it’s not particularly important to call it out as a risk here.
- pm90 6y ago
  You have to understand how the federal government works. Now that something like this has been implemented and has been successful, it’s likely that it will be adopted more widely, perhaps at the state level. An enterprising congressperson (most likely one of their aides) will notice this opportunity and pick it up as a policy/platform to run on at which point legislation would be introduced that would allocate funds or direct the federal government and/or all states to implement this. Another way is that a Federal agency gets wind of it and pilots it and then proposes to adopt it more widely.
kebman 6y ago
Saw a dude sleeping on the street in -13°C today. My friend called the police. They told us to call the ambulance. We called the ambulace. They told us to call the police. We called the police. They said they'd call the ambulance........ Shortly after he was called up by the ambulance, who said the police was on their way. Well, it's good to know you get help over here, eventually.
- sp332 6y ago
  That's a terrible set of choices available. What could you expect the police to do, anyway?
  - justin66 6y ago
    Drive the guy to a shelter, drive the guy outside of town and dump him in a snowdrift, or nothing seem like three typical options.
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    Here, they would give him a ride if he gave them an address, or take him to a shelter.
  - lm28469 6y ago
    To "serve and protect" its citizen ?
- derefr 6y ago
  I feel like most communities could really use a city-government-backed non-emergency medical dispatch. Not the ambulance/EMS (which is for emergencies and/or for bringing people to the hospital); not the police (who are armed and trained to respond with violence); just medical-ish people who could be called out to those in need of some important-but-not-urgent medical attention. It could even just be a volunteer service of community members with good upper-arm strength, first-aid training, and an extended form of Good Samaritan-law protections. Semi-professional first responders, with no other qualification than being a first responder. So basically, lifeguards. For places other than pools. Some communities that don't have many fires dispatch their firefighters for this, and that works pretty well. But most fire units don't have enough downtime for that to be workable.
lysp 6y ago
I'm vaguely aware of a service in Australia where a police unit teams up with a mental health worker. When there is a police call for someone which they feel is mental-health related, they'll send this specific unit if available. The health worker takes the lead with the police officer just there to provide support if needed. If the situation gets very serious, police still have powers of arrest under the Mental Health Act to take them to hospital.
- unraveller 6y ago
  I'm intimately aware of the service. I don't hold out much hope for mental health engagements that begin forcefully under immediate threat of arrest for not playing along. The anti-social/anti-authority person should only be encouraged to seek moral guidance voluntarily from an authority they trust, some things in a community need to be kept sacred and honest.
Animats 6y ago
The US used to have more of that. The men in the white coats would come to take crazies away. In the SF bay area, they were sent to Agnews Insane Asylum in Santa Clara, which gradually closed down and is now an Oracle facility. When that institution was active, homeless people were rarely seen.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  This trend will be interesting. We mainly abandoned the practice in the late 1960’s and turned more towards policing by the 1980’s. Mental institutions got a really bad reputation and some of it justified as we were committing people for things like being gay. Lobotomies became unbelievably common. The whole concept was scary. So today there’s a general distaste for policing tactics which although very effective, people seem to be souring on the costs - high prison populations, a feeling of profiling, and suspected unfair treatment of certain demographics. Criminal justice is in a crisis right now and people demand change. So things like this have been becoming popular. I wonder how long it will be before it’s widespread and prison budgets are rerouted to mental health facilities? I’m most curious about what will be considered a mental health issue and how politicized that will be. I’m very cautiously optimistic that it could be a change for the better if administrated well.
  - tadfisher 6y ago
    Can we not learn from the several dozen other democracies with both lower prison populations and lower overall crime rates? I'm curious how the US is so unique in this regard.
    - chmod775 6y ago
      > I'm curious how the US is so unique in this regard. Culture, policing attitude, guns and the fact that the only thing lesser than the training US police officers receive is the bar to becoming one. In most western countries becoming a police officer is a multi-year selective process, with lots and lots of training for conflict resolution, lessons on psychology, and of course the law. In the US you can be let loose on the streets in as little as 3 months. Then once you're past the street level, the US also imposes much higher sentences on average, and punishment continues even after your sentence is served - by marking you as a felon for the rest of your life and locking you out of many opportunities for leading a normal life. Hello to high recidivism rates. The prison term itself, the punishment, is also just that: punishment. Prison conditions are inhumane. If you treat humans as something lesser, they will behave accordingly. That's the rough picture.
hash872 6y ago
I start from a place of wanting this program to be successful, but I have to ask- what do they do if the subject becomes violent or dangerous? The disturbed person suddenly pulls a knife, or attacks the respondents? It seems unrealistic to not have someone armed & prepared for violence, even if they're just armed with pepper spray
- orangetang 6y ago
  I’ve wondered this as well, though I suppose many countries use a police force armed with just batons (but combat training I’d assume).
- myownpetard 6y ago
  They call the police.
  - huehehue 6y ago
    It can take a long time for the police to show up, and a very short time to be stabbed. Arming STAR members is probably a step in the wrong direction, but I agree that they need to be able to handle these situations on their own. This program deals specifically with nonviolent people, they presumably have some sense of what they're getting into and understand that violence, while not impossible, is very unlikely.
    - myownpetard 6y ago
      I agree. There are many comments here saying, "what if they turn violent?" as though that is a deal breaker for this kind of program. I think EMTs are a good model for this. If the situation escalates then the health professionals can disengage and call the police. It isn't a risk free profession just like firefighting, policing and logging aren't risk free professions. But the risk of violence does not mean we should do away with the program if it proves to be successful.
      - Vecr 6y ago
orasis 6y ago
Just wait until one of these workers gets attacked and seriously injured or worse...
- myownpetard 6y ago
  This program has the potential to be major net gain for our society. We have the largest incarcerated population in the world. We have mental health and opioid crises. Our current models of policing are ineffective and inhumane. I hope that these health professionals become far more widespread and are held in as high regard as firefighters who also risk being seriously injured or worse.
- JshWright 6y ago
  As someone who works in EMS, I don't understand this concern... Obviously this is not a zero risk activity (welcome to emergency services), but trained professionals are aware of the risk, and have the skills to assess and react as needed (including leaving the area and calling police). This is not some new problem no one has encountered before. EMS has been dealing with it for decades.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Is EMS typically responsible for dealing with violent individuals? I always though the police handled it then EMS stepped in.
    - myownpetard 6y ago
      The health care professionals of the STAR program are also not dealing with violent individuals.
      - msla 6y ago
        They aren't until they are. Things change rapidly in life.
        6y ago
jojobas 6y ago
Any data on violence against the health professionals on duty? Don't know about Denver, but there are areas where even firefighters refuse to go without police escort.
- JshWright 6y ago
  Which places are those?
  - jojobas 6y ago
    Here, have a read https://www.firefighterclosecalls.com/ambos-demand-police-escort-to-violent-hotspots-australia/ https://www.firefighterclosecalls.com/ambos-demand-police-es... https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/longread/utanforskapet-inifran/brandbilarna-maste-backa-in--med-poliseskort/ https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/longread/utanforskapet-inif... https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/local-news/firefighters-refusing-enter-parts-sunderland-18939476 https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/local-news/firefighters... US-specific review: https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=804060 https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=804060
    - JshWright 6y ago
      So you have a few specific examples, none of which are relevant to the program described in the article... I'm already very familiar with the FEMA review you linked, and it does not make any recommendations to avoid specific places without an escort. (FWIW, I am a Firefighter/Paramedic in the US)
renewiltord 6y ago
Does anyone have any real information on this STAR program? I can't find anything around their protocol. Everything is PR stuff. The Denver PD Operations Manual does not mention them https://www.denvergov.org/content/dam/denvergov/Portals/720/documents/OperationsManual/OMSBook/OM_Book.pdf https://www.denvergov.org/content/dam/denvergov/Portals/720/...
- chmod775 6y ago
  It's not really clear what you mean by "information". It appears whatever you're looking for isn't in the article or any of the charts therein, but can you be more specific? What are you looking for?
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Yeah, I'm curious about their protocol and organization. So: * Org chart - which city dept they report in to * Dispatch Protocol - It says a third of the time they're called in by police officers. Is the only other way to get them to call 911 and ask for them? * Emergency Protocol - What is their stated approach to dealing with the situation if it goes pear shaped, who do they call, how do they make sure they're not around to get hurt.
RedComet 6y ago
This is the most dystopian post I've seen here in a long time...
- tadfisher 6y ago
  Can you explain further?
- myownpetard 6y ago
  Unless you're making your money on private prisons this program seems like a win for every actor in the system: the police, the distressed person, tax payers, society as a whole.
- lm28469 6y ago
  I find the almost weekly reports of mentally impaired/ill people getting killed by police in the US much more dystopian.
specialp 6y ago
The police don't want to have to attend to calls with "emotionally disturbed persons" as they term them. I know a few officers in the NYPD and unfortunately they aren't given many tools in order to deal with these people. They either have to dump them off at a hospital (who often also doesn't want them) or arrest them for whatever they did. It is really not what they want to be doing. In NY long ago there were very large institutions where they'd ship mentally ill people off to. This was not a good thing at all but the police did not have to deal with habitual people that stop taking their medication. Now there is not much they can do. So officers would love to have these resources.
- butt_hugger 6y ago
  What's up, bootlicker?
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't do this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Importantly, the closure of those institutions is what created the homelessness crisis.
fggg444 6y ago
health care professionals don't arrest people...so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  They call the police when shit goes south.
ogre_codes 6y ago
We've had a program like this in Eugene Oregon for 30 Years. It's the model a lot of other programs follow. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/this-town-of-170000-replaced-some-cops-with-medics-and-mental-health-workers-its-worked-for-over-30-years/ar-BB16lO1G https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/this-town-of-170000-replac... They handle most non-violent 911 calls which cops would end up handling. Things like people walking into a business naked or sleeping in the doorway of a business, these guys get called. It's a big percentage of 911 calls in any city where you have homeless people. Usually they can help people out, but if people do get violent or belligerent, they call for police backup. That's pretty rare. Overdoses, sick homeless people, people shouting random shit at people in front of businesses, pretty much anything non violent, these guys talk them down give them a little help, drive them to a clinic, or whatever they need. It's a lot cheaper and more humane than arresting them.
- GhostOT 6y ago
  Really big fan of this approach. I'm often afraid to call the cops because I don't want them stepping into places where they aren't going to be helpful. Especially in more tense situations that may involve illegal substances or other grey area activities. We usually don't want anyone getting in trouble, we just want a tough situation sorted out in a healthy way.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    Eugene gets a fair number of things right for being a fairly backwater city. I do wish they had a better solution for homelessness in general, but we do as well as most cities on that and CAHOOTS treats the homeless far more humanely than most cities. (Plus it saves the city money!)
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      >Eugene gets a fair number of things right for being a fairly backwater city Well of course. They don't have seemingly unlimited money to piss away. They have a defined amount of resources and a problem to solve so they figure it out the best they can. It's never the SFs, NYCs, Austins or Bostons on the world that come up with novel ways to tackle problems. They're rich enough to afford bad government and to try and spend their way out of their problems. It's the Clevelands and the Buffalos and the Newarks of the world that innovate. They don't have a choice because they have to figure out how to do more with less.
unraveller 6y ago
It works in the sense that the stats look good initially until the clients get bored and say the magic words "I DON'T WANT TO TALK TO YOU". These mental episodes are thinly veiled threats, they want to be pampered or antagonism will follow. You can pamper them with attention but it will only encourage that person to escalate next time when not pampered as much. A self-fulfilling cycle that keeps the health care professionals in high demand. The stats about non-violent incident success conceal what kinds of incentive structure they offer the offender and the professional who won't always report violent outbursts.
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  Well hey, if that works and is cheaper, let's do it, right?
shinsheel 6y ago
Oh, that's a good soviet practice. Underlying energy of why it works - people are actually afraid of psych facility even more than police department and think if they get there they would have even less chance to get out. Also medical personnel is trained for everyday kind of violence, they can just beat the shit out of you where police would maybe wait until one more step of escalation. That free hands give them authority that police doesn't have. Just give police permission to beat people on a whim and you would instantly see the same effect with nobody risking to mess with police again and so no need for arrest.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  These programs aren't like that. A van shows up, a medic and someone with experience dealing with mental health issues. They talk to people help them with some basic needs, drive them to a clinic if they need detox (and want to go) or otherwise just get them to stop doing whatever it was that caused someone to call 911. The STARS people have no authority to cart people off, and are trained to avoid physical confrontation. If people get violent or need to be physically removed, they protect themselves and call the police.
anovikov 6y ago
Haha i'd hate to pay those crazy fees to policemen now too :D
chkaloon 6y ago
So how many arrests were made in the 1700+ calls they were not involved in? Did I just miss it?
gnicholas 6y ago
According to the linked progress report [1], they peeled off about 2.8% of incidents for this program. The second largest type of incident was Welfare Check, which I believe means "I need to check on X person whom I haven't heard from and isn't answering their phone". [2] Welfare Checks made up about 20% of the total incidents they handled, and of course these wouldn't result in arrests. The other leading incident types were Trespass, Assist, Follow-Up, and Suicide. Of these, only Trespass (the leading incident type) would seem to have the potential for an arrest. But as other commenters have mentioned, it is perhaps not great to never arrest trespassers because they would be more likely to continue trespassing. Overall, these five incident types make up 75% of the total incidents handled. Four of the categories pretty much have no way of leading to arrests, and the fifth category is one where it's not clear that never arresting people will lead to the best outcome. There are many good reasons to consider having non-police respond to some calls that are currently routed to police. But I'm not sure that looking at this program only through the lens of "there were no arrests" is the right way to measure success. They should look at other factors (do police make arrests when they go out on calls like these? Is the lack of arrests causing people to become less inhibited about trespassing, for example?) before heralding the program as a success. 1: https://wp-denverite.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/02/STAR_Pilot_6_Month_Evaluation_FINAL-REPORT.pdf https://wp-denverite.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sit... 2: https://thelawdictionary.org/article/what-is-a-police-welfare-check/ https://thelawdictionary.org/article/what-is-a-police-welfar...
- teachrdan 6y ago
  I believe you are mistaken about welfare checks being unlikely to end in arrest. It's not uncommon for police to find reasons, or create them, to arrest people in the course of conducting one. A quick Google search for "wrongful arrest welfare check" finds numerous results, including a woman who was arrested when the police entered the wrong address, and a Black woman who was killed when the police officer failed to identify himself. The unfortunate truth is that anytime a police officer is involved in a situation in the US, it can escalate into a wrongful arrest or worse. https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/outreach/awareness-months/millions-awarded-to-denver-woman-falsely-arrested-taken-to-jail-while-naked/520-cd2a5bb7-19b1-4ea8-8b5d-b46c45505fc3 https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/outreach/awareness-... https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/19/us/wellness-check-police-shootings-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/19/us/wellness-check-police-shoo...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
TedShiller 6y ago
lol
einpoklum 6y ago
> traveled around the city in a white van handling low-level incidents, like trespassing and mental health episodes In many (most?) other countries, the police may not even get called in for such cases; and anyway, an arrest would not be made. At most, the police officer might demand the trespasser vacate the premises, escort them out, then give them a threatening talking-to.
ausbah 6y ago
there is something laughably grim in how a new initiative does a better job in handling types of cases than police, but the money they save is funneled right back into the police - the institution that is responsible for mishandling so many of these cases in the first place
- dolni 6y ago
  Can I take this comment to mean you are a proponent of No Child Left Behind? Because when an organization isn't doing well, clearly the answer is to give them _less_ money.

679 points by ryanwhitney 6y ago

I fully support using the proper resources to tackle these non-violent problems instead of sending cops which could very easily turn into someone dead. What I do not support is completely decriminalization or disincarceration like the current DA of San Francisco is doing. He has turned SF into a dangerous place where criminals are no longer worried about stealing into cars, burglarizing homes, etc. This will only escalate and I really hope the recall effort to get rid of him hastens.

lorax_108 6y ago

this is what people mean by defunding the police! conservatives are so silly when they say this increases crime...

wartron 6y ago

This title makes it sound like a bad thing, but this is good. Edit: I think the title was changed between me posting this. Please ignore it.

Triv888 6y ago
That new title confused me at first... maybe I'm the only one. The actual title of the article is more clear to me. Actual title: "In the first six months of health care professionals replacing police officers, no one they encountered was arrested" HN title: "Zero arrests in 6 months of health care professionals replacing police officers"
tsycho 6y ago
Funny, I read the title and immediately thought it was a good thing. Only after I read your comment did I consider the alternative :)
dv_dt 6y ago
Why not the actual title (though that title is a little awkward too) “In the first six months of health care professionals replacing police officers, no one they encountered was arrested”
- ryanwhitney 6y ago
  Character count, sadly. I’m not a fan of editing either.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
Whether no arrests is a good thing depends on the crimes. Only the most ideologically blinded would defend having a social worker team like this respond to car break-ins and the other broad daylight petty theft that has plagued California since they passed that ballot measure awhile back (and a couple other specific cities with similiar legislation). If using this program as an alternative to police response for drunk and disorderly conduct, teenagers doing teenager things, homeless person trespassing and other "no immediate victim" type crime (which is what it sounds like from TFA) then it's a good thing.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  If the breakins are people who need food and shelter, maybe they can help. Or if they can convince people to switch from crime to legitimate income. In other words I'd be okay with lesser penalties for someone smashing my window if in exchange there was a very high likelihood of getting caught, and of that event leading to reformed lives.
  - cvdub 6y ago
    I'd love to see stats on how many of the people involved in these incidents end up leading reformed lives. The mental health team diffuses the situation and no one gets arrested. That's great on paper, but what happens tomorrow? If someone is smashing car windows to pay for their drug addiction, what's stopping them from doing it again tomorrow?
    - myownpetard 6y ago
      > what's stopping them from doing it again tomorrow? Giving medical help to a drug addict is more likely to reduce the likelihood that they commit another crime than giving them a criminal record.
      - nitrogen 6y ago
        Anecdotally, I can confirm this by seeing someone who made one very real but economically insignificant mistake have their career ruined for years over a misdemeanor charge. They needed financial and emotional help. Instead they got a plea bargain steamroller, no chance to talk to counsel, etc.
sdrg822 6y ago
Agreed, the "but" in the bolded text[1] further confuses, but the article highlights some great progress. >> STAR, has responded to 748 incidents." >> about 3 percent of calls for DPD service, or over 2,500 incidents, were worthy of the alternative approach [1] "Chief Pazen is thrilled with the success of STAR, but the time and money it saves will go toward fighting crime, he said."
baryphonic 6y ago
The title is the worst part of the story. It seems tautological that a person will not be arrested when the police hand off that person to people who don't carry out arrests. It'd be a bit like saying that in the first six months of marijuana legalization, there were zero arrests for marijuana possession. The more interesting (and heartening) aspect is that the police and the white van brigade appear to be working together and helping each other do what they do best, with benefits to the community.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Exactly. If the police decide they're making an arrest these guys aren't getting the call. These guys get called when the police feel like helping but can't justify spending their time on it.
- addicted 6y ago
  The white van has the right and ability to call the police to make an arrest. In the past, these 750 incidents, which did not require police intervention would have likely led to a police squad wasting time on these 750 incidents as opposed to spending time on other real crime issues. The problem is that such white vans don’t exist in other police forces.
- astura 6y ago
  If the mental health personnel can't resolve the issue on their own they call for police backup to make arrests. The fact there were zero arrests means the mental health personnel were able to handle every case they encountered. I agree it's worded strangely.

michaelbuckbee 6y ago

Wow. That one team of folks is on track to handle 1,500 incidents a year. That's a tremendous win on pretty much every level.

imperio59 6y ago

No one is talking about the very big risk associated with this, that mental health professionals can commit you against your will with no trial, which is an erosion of civil liberties (incarceration without trial). Having known several friends who got committed and held against their will in psych wards when there was no good reason to, because their insurance was good, this is an issue. Notice they don't give any stats about outcomes, but the primary cited issue is "mental health" which is very vague and a subjective assessment. We should not create an extra judicial system that has no checks and balances. Otherwise we will head towards medical authoritarianism which could easily be abused by those in power (psychiatrists and others) for their own personal gain. See https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosalindadams/intake https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosalindadams/intake for an example of what I mean.

monadic3 6y ago
> No one is talking about the very big risk associated with this The left is. "Abolish the police"/"Abolish prisons" refer to an abolition of policing and the entire law enforcement/prison complex. Social workers (and, I suspect, other rapid response officials) are certainly part of this.
Benjammer 6y ago
Is the risk alone a "very big" risk? Or are you saying the difference in risk of this happening with a cop vs. a medical person is a "very big" difference? Are cops not also able to commit someone involuntarily? Why are you talking about objective "very big risk" without comparing it to the current situation and what is different about this? I did a google search for "can a police officer commit someone to a mental ward" and this is the first result, from harvard: https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2014/11/25/short-term-emergency-commitment-laws-require-police-to-assess-symptoms-of-mental-illness/#:~:text=In%20most%20jurisdictions%2C%20a%20police,short%2Dterm%20emergency%20commitment%20process https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2014/11/25/short-ter.... This says that a police officer is also able to commit someone in most jurisdictions. Why didn't you also mention this fact? FUD
- aaronbrethorst 6y ago

olivermarks 6y ago

Worth revisiting this 1984 NYT article 'HOW RELEASE OF MENTAL PATIENTS BEGAN' 'THE policy that led to the release of most of the nation's mentally ill patients from the hospital to the community is now widely regarded as a major failure. Sweeping critiques of the policy, notably the recent report of the American Psychiatric Association, have spread the blame everywhere, faulting politicians, civil libertarian lawyers and psychiatrists....' This is encouraging in Denver but we need a much more serious nationwide approach IMO https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-me...

olivermarks 6y ago
'Many of the psychiatrists involved as practitioners and policy makers in the 1950's and 1960's said in the interviews that heavy responsibility lay on a sometimes neglected aspect of the problem: the overreliance on drugs to do the work of society. The records show that the politicians were dogged by the image and financial problems posed by the state hospitals and that the scientific and medical establishment sold Congress and the state legislatures a quick fix for a complicated problem that was bought sight unseen.'

Fellshard 6y ago

Correlation / causation problem here. Of course arrests will go down in that circumstance, by definition. You need other metrics beyond 'arrests' to properly measure effectiveness of the policy, though.

jjeaff 6y ago
I would assume that if the mental health professional can't resolve the issue, then they would call the police to arrest them, no?
- haggy 6y ago
  Yea they even mention that traditional policing didn't go away, they are just now focused on crime
- darawk 6y ago
  Right, but they're also arresting fewer people. People that likely would otherwise have been arrested. Broadly speaking i'm supportive of this initiative, but it's important that its outcomes actually be measured, and just number of arrests is not a good metric. Not arresting people is easy, it's hard to not arrest them without increasing crime. I hope it works though.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    > People that likely would otherwise have been arrested. But that's... that's the point, right? I get what you're saying, but the outcome people wanted was "conflicts that don't need to result in arrests should stop resulting in arrests." The goal was to reduce needless arrests and only have arrests in situations that couldn't be handled in other ways. I mean, we can measure other things like long-term impacts on people's health, prevalence of crime, etc... but one of the questions I was hearing when this idea was first floated was actually, "can these situations be resolved without arrests, or are the police just going to need to be eventually called anyway?" And it does seem like this outcome goes some way towards answering that question. Just as an analogy: if I introduce script changes in a support center with the goal of solving customer problems faster and having fewer calls escalated up the chain to upper management, and at the end of 6 months, way fewer calls are being escalated up the chain to upper management, then that's a statistic I care about. It's not the only stat I care about when figuring out if my changes were successful, I might also look at things like customer satisfaction and call time, but it is on its own a pretty important outcome for me to measure.

jacob2484 6y ago

I support the initiative, but it's sadly only a matter of time until one of the social workers is slashed/shot at by someone they're trying to help.

pm90 6y ago
They’re professionals. I think they’re aware that there are risks involved on this job. The brutal truth is that social services for the dysfunctional elements of society will almost certainly involve more risk than what “regular” people will face. I hope that they’re compensation reflects that additional risk.
- smabie 6y ago
  Compensation for risk occurs through the same mechanism as compensation for everything: the supply and demand curves. This creates outcomes where the compensation for risk occurs at a deeper level, co-mingled in with many other factors. I'm sure many people don't agree with this and think the absolute riskiness of a job should factor into compensation irrespective of the risk preferences of the labor market as a whole. I don't really agree and generally contend that markets (labor or otherwise) are the most efficient and elegant solution for pricing anything. At the very least, if a better and more robust system exists, it hasn't been discovered as of yet.
  - elil17 6y ago
    When the government is the one doing the hiring, they don’t have to pay market rates. They can decide add on hazard pay. This system already exists - it’s why police get better pay and benefits compared to jobs with similar education requirements and levels of danger in the private sector (e.g. delivery drivers). Why couldn’t that hazard pay be extended to these psychiatric responders?
    - souprock 6y ago
      Yes they have to pay market rates. Suppose they don't. They declare the job to be worth $2/hour, which they can do because minimum wage is just a law the government can change. Nobody takes the job. Now what? Those job openings go unfilled forever, literally forever, until the government decides to pay market rate. The only way to pay below market rate is conscription. The government could draft people, forcing them to do the job. If people are free to leave, they are getting market rate.

malandrew 6y ago

Given that they are being dispatched to those incidents that cops probably wouldn't have responded with an arrest anyways, it's hard to compare. If they or cops were dispatched entirely randomly to incidents, it would be possible to do a fair comparison so long as the number of incidents the both groups respond to were numerous enough to be statistically significant.

renewiltord 6y ago
Considering the DPD boss supported this method precisely because he was having police officers wasted at situations that didn't need them, the fact that there were no arrests means perfect specificity on the test for "Should I choose STAR over PD?". Why would you randomly dispatch them? That would defeat the purpose entirely of this unit.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

I’m sure it’s more complex than this, but why isn’t the federal government jumping at this as a massive employment opportunity. You could train a wide variety of people for these jobs, and the way the jobs could be structured, support roles might not require college degrees in a lot of cases. Award grants or conditional extra city funding to cities that grow the program and make it work. People get to feel good about giving back, the country can feel good about reducing needless arrests, we can make bigger strides to solving homelessness, we can make good on various social justice reform items not only without necessarily massively defunding police, but also by freeing police up to actually do the much harder job they are trained for and stop treating police like they need to also be an arbitrary mental health issue handler. There’s a lot of complexity for sure. This idea will hit a lot of roadblocks. But it seems like the potential upside across a dozen or so dimensions is super high. Of course this is the same country that shuts out widespread nuclear power, so maybe this is the last we’ll hear about it when some police equipment manufacturer starts lobbying against it the minute one of these workers is involved in a violent encounter or significant arrest or something.

jquery 6y ago
> I’m sure it’s more complex than this For starters, a lot of people have negative productivity. Think of someone intensely anti-social who drags down the productivity of people around them.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  Presumably that would be true of any possible intervention and if we overcome that risk in every endeavor reliant on human productivity then it’s not particularly important to call it out as a risk here.
pm90 6y ago
You have to understand how the federal government works. Now that something like this has been implemented and has been successful, it’s likely that it will be adopted more widely, perhaps at the state level. An enterprising congressperson (most likely one of their aides) will notice this opportunity and pick it up as a policy/platform to run on at which point legislation would be introduced that would allocate funds or direct the federal government and/or all states to implement this. Another way is that a Federal agency gets wind of it and pilots it and then proposes to adopt it more widely.

kebman 6y ago

Saw a dude sleeping on the street in -13°C today. My friend called the police. They told us to call the ambulance. We called the ambulace. They told us to call the police. We called the police. They said they'd call the ambulance........ Shortly after he was called up by the ambulance, who said the police was on their way. Well, it's good to know you get help over here, eventually.

sp332 6y ago
That's a terrible set of choices available. What could you expect the police to do, anyway?
- justin66 6y ago
  Drive the guy to a shelter, drive the guy outside of town and dump him in a snowdrift, or nothing seem like three typical options.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  Here, they would give him a ride if he gave them an address, or take him to a shelter.
- lm28469 6y ago
  To "serve and protect" its citizen ?
derefr 6y ago
I feel like most communities could really use a city-government-backed non-emergency medical dispatch. Not the ambulance/EMS (which is for emergencies and/or for bringing people to the hospital); not the police (who are armed and trained to respond with violence); just medical-ish people who could be called out to those in need of some important-but-not-urgent medical attention. It could even just be a volunteer service of community members with good upper-arm strength, first-aid training, and an extended form of Good Samaritan-law protections. Semi-professional first responders, with no other qualification than being a first responder. So basically, lifeguards. For places other than pools. Some communities that don't have many fires dispatch their firefighters for this, and that works pretty well. But most fire units don't have enough downtime for that to be workable.

lysp 6y ago

I'm vaguely aware of a service in Australia where a police unit teams up with a mental health worker. When there is a police call for someone which they feel is mental-health related, they'll send this specific unit if available. The health worker takes the lead with the police officer just there to provide support if needed. If the situation gets very serious, police still have powers of arrest under the Mental Health Act to take them to hospital.

unraveller 6y ago
I'm intimately aware of the service. I don't hold out much hope for mental health engagements that begin forcefully under immediate threat of arrest for not playing along. The anti-social/anti-authority person should only be encouraged to seek moral guidance voluntarily from an authority they trust, some things in a community need to be kept sacred and honest.

Animats 6y ago

The US used to have more of that. The men in the white coats would come to take crazies away. In the SF bay area, they were sent to Agnews Insane Asylum in Santa Clara, which gradually closed down and is now an Oracle facility. When that institution was active, homeless people were rarely seen.

nemo44x 6y ago
This trend will be interesting. We mainly abandoned the practice in the late 1960’s and turned more towards policing by the 1980’s. Mental institutions got a really bad reputation and some of it justified as we were committing people for things like being gay. Lobotomies became unbelievably common. The whole concept was scary. So today there’s a general distaste for policing tactics which although very effective, people seem to be souring on the costs - high prison populations, a feeling of profiling, and suspected unfair treatment of certain demographics. Criminal justice is in a crisis right now and people demand change. So things like this have been becoming popular. I wonder how long it will be before it’s widespread and prison budgets are rerouted to mental health facilities? I’m most curious about what will be considered a mental health issue and how politicized that will be. I’m very cautiously optimistic that it could be a change for the better if administrated well.
- tadfisher 6y ago
  Can we not learn from the several dozen other democracies with both lower prison populations and lower overall crime rates? I'm curious how the US is so unique in this regard.
  - chmod775 6y ago
    > I'm curious how the US is so unique in this regard. Culture, policing attitude, guns and the fact that the only thing lesser than the training US police officers receive is the bar to becoming one. In most western countries becoming a police officer is a multi-year selective process, with lots and lots of training for conflict resolution, lessons on psychology, and of course the law. In the US you can be let loose on the streets in as little as 3 months. Then once you're past the street level, the US also imposes much higher sentences on average, and punishment continues even after your sentence is served - by marking you as a felon for the rest of your life and locking you out of many opportunities for leading a normal life. Hello to high recidivism rates. The prison term itself, the punishment, is also just that: punishment. Prison conditions are inhumane. If you treat humans as something lesser, they will behave accordingly. That's the rough picture.

hash872 6y ago

I start from a place of wanting this program to be successful, but I have to ask- what do they do if the subject becomes violent or dangerous? The disturbed person suddenly pulls a knife, or attacks the respondents? It seems unrealistic to not have someone armed & prepared for violence, even if they're just armed with pepper spray

orangetang 6y ago
I’ve wondered this as well, though I suppose many countries use a police force armed with just batons (but combat training I’d assume).
myownpetard 6y ago
They call the police.
- huehehue 6y ago
  It can take a long time for the police to show up, and a very short time to be stabbed. Arming STAR members is probably a step in the wrong direction, but I agree that they need to be able to handle these situations on their own. This program deals specifically with nonviolent people, they presumably have some sense of what they're getting into and understand that violence, while not impossible, is very unlikely.
  - myownpetard 6y ago
    I agree. There are many comments here saying, "what if they turn violent?" as though that is a deal breaker for this kind of program. I think EMTs are a good model for this. If the situation escalates then the health professionals can disengage and call the police. It isn't a risk free profession just like firefighting, policing and logging aren't risk free professions. But the risk of violence does not mean we should do away with the program if it proves to be successful.
    - Vecr 6y ago

orasis 6y ago

Just wait until one of these workers gets attacked and seriously injured or worse...

myownpetard 6y ago
This program has the potential to be major net gain for our society. We have the largest incarcerated population in the world. We have mental health and opioid crises. Our current models of policing are ineffective and inhumane. I hope that these health professionals become far more widespread and are held in as high regard as firefighters who also risk being seriously injured or worse.
JshWright 6y ago
As someone who works in EMS, I don't understand this concern... Obviously this is not a zero risk activity (welcome to emergency services), but trained professionals are aware of the risk, and have the skills to assess and react as needed (including leaving the area and calling police). This is not some new problem no one has encountered before. EMS has been dealing with it for decades.
- refurb 6y ago
  Is EMS typically responsible for dealing with violent individuals? I always though the police handled it then EMS stepped in.
  - myownpetard 6y ago
    The health care professionals of the STAR program are also not dealing with violent individuals.
    - msla 6y ago
      They aren't until they are. Things change rapidly in life.
      - 6y ago

jojobas 6y ago

Any data on violence against the health professionals on duty? Don't know about Denver, but there are areas where even firefighters refuse to go without police escort.

JshWright 6y ago
Which places are those?
- jojobas 6y ago
  Here, have a read https://www.firefighterclosecalls.com/ambos-demand-police-escort-to-violent-hotspots-australia/ https://www.firefighterclosecalls.com/ambos-demand-police-es... https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/longread/utanforskapet-inifran/brandbilarna-maste-backa-in--med-poliseskort/ https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/longread/utanforskapet-inif... https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/local-news/firefighters-refusing-enter-parts-sunderland-18939476 https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/local-news/firefighters... US-specific review: https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=804060 https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=804060
  - JshWright 6y ago
    So you have a few specific examples, none of which are relevant to the program described in the article... I'm already very familiar with the FEMA review you linked, and it does not make any recommendations to avoid specific places without an escort. (FWIW, I am a Firefighter/Paramedic in the US)

renewiltord 6y ago

Does anyone have any real information on this STAR program? I can't find anything around their protocol. Everything is PR stuff. The Denver PD Operations Manual does not mention them https://www.denvergov.org/content/dam/denvergov/Portals/720/documents/OperationsManual/OMSBook/OM_Book.pdf https://www.denvergov.org/content/dam/denvergov/Portals/720/...

chmod775 6y ago
It's not really clear what you mean by "information". It appears whatever you're looking for isn't in the article or any of the charts therein, but can you be more specific? What are you looking for?
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm curious about their protocol and organization. So: * Org chart - which city dept they report in to * Dispatch Protocol - It says a third of the time they're called in by police officers. Is the only other way to get them to call 911 and ask for them? * Emergency Protocol - What is their stated approach to dealing with the situation if it goes pear shaped, who do they call, how do they make sure they're not around to get hurt.

RedComet 6y ago

This is the most dystopian post I've seen here in a long time...

tadfisher 6y ago
Can you explain further?
myownpetard 6y ago
Unless you're making your money on private prisons this program seems like a win for every actor in the system: the police, the distressed person, tax payers, society as a whole.
lm28469 6y ago
I find the almost weekly reports of mentally impaired/ill people getting killed by police in the US much more dystopian.

specialp 6y ago

The police don't want to have to attend to calls with "emotionally disturbed persons" as they term them. I know a few officers in the NYPD and unfortunately they aren't given many tools in order to deal with these people. They either have to dump them off at a hospital (who often also doesn't want them) or arrest them for whatever they did. It is really not what they want to be doing. In NY long ago there were very large institutions where they'd ship mentally ill people off to. This was not a good thing at all but the police did not have to deal with habitual people that stop taking their medication. Now there is not much they can do. So officers would love to have these resources.

butt_hugger 6y ago
What's up, bootlicker?
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't do this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
koheripbal 6y ago
Importantly, the closure of those institutions is what created the homelessness crisis.

fggg444 6y ago

health care professionals don't arrest people...so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ogre_codes 6y ago
They call the police when shit goes south.

ogre_codes 6y ago

We've had a program like this in Eugene Oregon for 30 Years. It's the model a lot of other programs follow. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/this-town-of-170000-replaced-some-cops-with-medics-and-mental-health-workers-its-worked-for-over-30-years/ar-BB16lO1G https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/this-town-of-170000-replac... They handle most non-violent 911 calls which cops would end up handling. Things like people walking into a business naked or sleeping in the doorway of a business, these guys get called. It's a big percentage of 911 calls in any city where you have homeless people. Usually they can help people out, but if people do get violent or belligerent, they call for police backup. That's pretty rare. Overdoses, sick homeless people, people shouting random shit at people in front of businesses, pretty much anything non violent, these guys talk them down give them a little help, drive them to a clinic, or whatever they need. It's a lot cheaper and more humane than arresting them.

GhostOT 6y ago
Really big fan of this approach. I'm often afraid to call the cops because I don't want them stepping into places where they aren't going to be helpful. Especially in more tense situations that may involve illegal substances or other grey area activities. We usually don't want anyone getting in trouble, we just want a tough situation sorted out in a healthy way.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Eugene gets a fair number of things right for being a fairly backwater city. I do wish they had a better solution for homelessness in general, but we do as well as most cities on that and CAHOOTS treats the homeless far more humanely than most cities. (Plus it saves the city money!)
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    >Eugene gets a fair number of things right for being a fairly backwater city Well of course. They don't have seemingly unlimited money to piss away. They have a defined amount of resources and a problem to solve so they figure it out the best they can. It's never the SFs, NYCs, Austins or Bostons on the world that come up with novel ways to tackle problems. They're rich enough to afford bad government and to try and spend their way out of their problems. It's the Clevelands and the Buffalos and the Newarks of the world that innovate. They don't have a choice because they have to figure out how to do more with less.

unraveller 6y ago

It works in the sense that the stats look good initially until the clients get bored and say the magic words "I DON'T WANT TO TALK TO YOU". These mental episodes are thinly veiled threats, they want to be pampered or antagonism will follow. You can pamper them with attention but it will only encourage that person to escalate next time when not pampered as much. A self-fulfilling cycle that keeps the health care professionals in high demand. The stats about non-violent incident success conceal what kinds of incentive structure they offer the offender and the professional who won't always report violent outbursts.

FeepingCreature 6y ago
Well hey, if that works and is cheaper, let's do it, right?

shinsheel 6y ago

Oh, that's a good soviet practice. Underlying energy of why it works - people are actually afraid of psych facility even more than police department and think if they get there they would have even less chance to get out. Also medical personnel is trained for everyday kind of violence, they can just beat the shit out of you where police would maybe wait until one more step of escalation. That free hands give them authority that police doesn't have. Just give police permission to beat people on a whim and you would instantly see the same effect with nobody risking to mess with police again and so no need for arrest.

ogre_codes 6y ago
These programs aren't like that. A van shows up, a medic and someone with experience dealing with mental health issues. They talk to people help them with some basic needs, drive them to a clinic if they need detox (and want to go) or otherwise just get them to stop doing whatever it was that caused someone to call 911. The STARS people have no authority to cart people off, and are trained to avoid physical confrontation. If people get violent or need to be physically removed, they protect themselves and call the police.

anovikov 6y ago

Haha i'd hate to pay those crazy fees to policemen now too :D

chkaloon 6y ago

So how many arrests were made in the 1700+ calls they were not involved in? Did I just miss it?

gnicholas 6y ago

According to the linked progress report [1], they peeled off about 2.8% of incidents for this program. The second largest type of incident was Welfare Check, which I believe means "I need to check on X person whom I haven't heard from and isn't answering their phone". [2] Welfare Checks made up about 20% of the total incidents they handled, and of course these wouldn't result in arrests. The other leading incident types were Trespass, Assist, Follow-Up, and Suicide. Of these, only Trespass (the leading incident type) would seem to have the potential for an arrest. But as other commenters have mentioned, it is perhaps not great to never arrest trespassers because they would be more likely to continue trespassing. Overall, these five incident types make up 75% of the total incidents handled. Four of the categories pretty much have no way of leading to arrests, and the fifth category is one where it's not clear that never arresting people will lead to the best outcome. There are many good reasons to consider having non-police respond to some calls that are currently routed to police. But I'm not sure that looking at this program only through the lens of "there were no arrests" is the right way to measure success. They should look at other factors (do police make arrests when they go out on calls like these? Is the lack of arrests causing people to become less inhibited about trespassing, for example?) before heralding the program as a success. 1: https://wp-denverite.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/02/STAR_Pilot_6_Month_Evaluation_FINAL-REPORT.pdf https://wp-denverite.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sit... 2: https://thelawdictionary.org/article/what-is-a-police-welfare-check/ https://thelawdictionary.org/article/what-is-a-police-welfar...

teachrdan 6y ago
I believe you are mistaken about welfare checks being unlikely to end in arrest. It's not uncommon for police to find reasons, or create them, to arrest people in the course of conducting one. A quick Google search for "wrongful arrest welfare check" finds numerous results, including a woman who was arrested when the police entered the wrong address, and a Black woman who was killed when the police officer failed to identify himself. The unfortunate truth is that anytime a police officer is involved in a situation in the US, it can escalate into a wrongful arrest or worse. https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/outreach/awareness-months/millions-awarded-to-denver-woman-falsely-arrested-taken-to-jail-while-naked/520-cd2a5bb7-19b1-4ea8-8b5d-b46c45505fc3 https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/outreach/awareness-... https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/19/us/wellness-check-police-shootings-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/19/us/wellness-check-police-shoo...

deleted 6y ago

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TedShiller 6y ago

lol

einpoklum 6y ago

> traveled around the city in a white van handling low-level incidents, like trespassing and mental health episodes In many (most?) other countries, the police may not even get called in for such cases; and anyway, an arrest would not be made. At most, the police officer might demand the trespasser vacate the premises, escort them out, then give them a threatening talking-to.

ausbah 6y ago

there is something laughably grim in how a new initiative does a better job in handling types of cases than police, but the money they save is funneled right back into the police - the institution that is responsible for mishandling so many of these cases in the first place

dolni 6y ago
Can I take this comment to mean you are a proponent of No Child Left Behind? Because when an organization isn't doing well, clearly the answer is to give them _less_ money.